After Mideast Uprisings, Will the Arab League Finally Lead?

Its call for a no-fly zone over Libya could set a new precedent for protecting people over regimes

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa attends an emergency meeting among the Arab League foreign ministers, held to discuss issues about Libya, at the headquarters in Cairo March 2, 2011, by Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters.

In a 1946 photo of one of the first sessions of the Arab League Council,
two dozen men sit around a long, dark table littered with pens and
notebooks and heavy glass ashtrays, many of them sporting red fezzes,
thick glasses, and some degree of mustache.

Four years after the
photo was taken, Jordan's King Abdullah absorbed the West Bank of
Palestine into his kingdom, a move opposed by the Arab League. But in
the face of British and American U.S. support for the king, the Arab
League's opposition crumbled. "It was probably at this point," writes
historian Adeed Dawisha, "that the Arab public became skeptical of the
Arab League and of unity initiatives embarked upon by the Arab
governments."

Not much has changed in the half century since, save for the fezzes, which eventually went out of style.

For
the last few decades, the Arab League has symbolized the division and
stasis that has plagued the region as a whole, making its recent flurry
of activity around the crisis in Libya all the more remarkable. On
Saturday, the Arab League took the extraordinary step of recognizing
Libya's rebel movement and asking
the international community to impose a no-fly zone over the country.
Despite a long history of ignoring most of the worst abuses by Arab
leaders, the group is now seeking the ouster of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi,
who has been a member so long that his seat conforms to the shape of
his behind.

"The Arab League was always about those presidents
for life," says Roger Owen, a professor of Middle East history at
Harvard. "It functioned as kind of a club of elderly presidents. This
decision to request a no-fly zone is a test of their ability to support
this change in the Arab world."

The League was founded in 1945, the same year as the United Nations,
at a time when the region was still dotted with monarchies installed by
the British. Its Charter seems designed to serve the interest of a
ruling elite: the words "democracy," "rights," or even "citizen/s" are
nowhere to be found.

Instead, as set out in Article II: "The
League has as its purpose the strengthening of the relations between the
member-states, the coordination of their policies in order to achieve
co-operation between them and to safeguard their independence and
sovereignty; and a general concern with the affairs and interests of the
Arab countries." In other words, its mission is to protect nations, not
people. More tellingly, Article VIII notes, "Each member-state shall
respect the systems of government established in the other member-states
and regard them as exclusive concerns of those states. Each shall
pledge to abstain from any action calculated to change established
systems of government." It's no surprise to see governments safeguarding
the status quo, but rarely is that objective stated so transparently.

Certainly no one was more established than Qaddafi, who has ruled Libya for forty years, and whose elaborate robes
brought back some of the flair that disappeared with those red hats. So
why did the Arab League, after tolerating him and his
blink-and-you'll-miss-a-human-rights-violation regime, decide to act
now?

"Qaddafi was never popular amongst his Arab brothers or
sisters," says Abdal Aleem El Abeyad, who retired in 2009 as Arab League
Secretary General Amr Moussa's spokesperson. Referring to an incident
at a summit in Doha "He was always a maverick. He behaved really badly,"
Abeyad said, referring to an "incident" at the 2009 Doha summit in
which Qaddafi called King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia a "liar," a "British
product" and an "American ally" before stalking out of the room. "He had no respect for his colleagues, who also had no respect for him."

Speaking
by phone from his Egyptian beach house, he welcomed Saturday's decision to
request a no-fly zone from the United Nations Security Council. "Usually
in these matters, they prefer not to take a stand."

The
organization has a 65-year history of not taking stands. Notable
exceptions include its eventual condemnation of Saddam's invasion of
Kuwait and a comprehensive peace plan for Palestine and Israel, which,
after its launch in 2002, was roundly ignored by the rest of the world.
Even on the peace process, which has been the focus of most of the
League's attentions, its stance was more of a slouch: plenty of
attitude, but no spine.

Because of internal divisions between
individual members, the League practices what Robert Danin, a Senior
Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the former head of the
office of the Quartetcalled, "lowest common denominator politics,
which often means simply being critical of Israel." He explained, "It's
extremely ineffectual. It's a body that projects collectively the face,
if not the will, of the Arab people."

Even Saturday's decision
was not unanimous. Syria and Algeria reportedly objected, not because
they'll miss Qaddafi's flamboyant outfits and crazy talk,
but most likely out of fear that they might also be taken to task for
their own less-than-wholesome approaches to governance, say Arab
League-watchers.

"The request certainly creates a double standard
of sorts," said Charles Kupchan, Professor of International Affairs at
Georgetown University and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations. "Some of these regimes are very sensitive to claims of
illegitimacy from the West."

Several analysts point to the
possibility of a resurgent, post-Tahrir Egyptian assertiveness,
reminiscent of the 1950s, when a growing sentiment of pan-Arabism took
off, inspired by President Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egyptian nationalism.

"Over
the last decade, Egypt had steadily lost its place in Arab society,"
said Richard W. Murphy, an expert with the Middle East Institute and a
former ambassador to Syria, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia, noting that the
Egyptian professional class, once recruited and respected around the
region, had lost much of its prestige. "So after Tahrir Square, this
looked like a flaming display of pride, and a display of leadership and
where Moussa's own hopes are at there."

Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia
University, pointed to Egypt's new Foreign Minister, Nabil al-Araby, as
a key mover. With his appointment after the revolution, Egypt is a
playing a more active role in the region and on behalf of Arab peoples
rather than governments, despite the country's economic integration with
Libya, which might ordinarily give it pause.

"Because of the
large number of their citizens (over a million in the case of Egypt) who
work in Libya, there has been a certain reluctance on the part of
post-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia to take a high profile, this in
spite of their sympathy with the opponents to Qaddafi," Khalidi said by
email.

Former Ambassador Donald F. McHenry, Distinguished
Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the School of Foreign Service
at Georgetown University, suggested that Amr Moussa's own political
ambitions spurred this decisive action. "He's the Secretary General of
the Arab League, who wants to put forward his own democratic credentials
because he wants to run for President."

But until the Arab
League's membership consists of more democratically elected presidents
and less autocrats, it won't reflect the will of the Arab people. While
the hard stance against Qaddafi may look like as though the "winds of
change" are dusting off some of the Arab League's cobwebs, Gaddafi could
just be a sacrificial lamb, an easily expendable dictator whose ouster
serves to shore up the position of those still in power.

"These
other regimes face popular uprisings of a sort they have never
witnessed, and supporting the no-fly zone can bolster their
credibility," said Kupchan. "If you combine that street cred with some
domestic reforms, then some of these regimes can maintain control."

Whether
or not this decision sets a precedent remains to be seen. Jean-Pierre
Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University and the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), noted, "It's the first time the League is accepting that
one of its own members' sovereignty can be infringed," a development he
sees as "enormous." If that's the case, its enormity should be balanced
against a long history of existing as what Egyptian political
commentator Mona el-Tahawy called "a totally discredited organization."

Asked
if she could point to a notable Arab League political victory over its
sixty-five-year existence, el-Tahawy paused for no less than a full
millisecond before answering.

"Up till now, they've done absolutely nothing."

Photo: One of the first Arab League meetings in 1946, from Albert Hourani's A History of The Arab Peoples